An attempt in progress to compile the most universal movies of all time, the creamiest of the crop, the most rewarding and eternal.
Sharing your assent or dissent, as well as any pertinent info, will be greatly appreciated and cited. The goal is not to make you admire this list. It's to get more people making this kind of list for themselves.

This is a weird movie! It's so real, so beautiful, and so sad! The lead actors are one of the most famous movie couples ever, if not the most famous. Known for their beauty, class, and acting talent, and yet here they are gross, boorish, pitiful, old-aged, and dumpy! I am not one who is unfamiliar with how acting works, how the actors are not really the characters they play and often nothing like them. Yet, these two roles so become the actors that I can no longer picture the actors any other way. Every performance I see of Taylor's before this role seems too ripe and not fleshed out enough, and every role she did afterwards seems a tad rotten and sloppy. It's the same with Burton. Every other role he's done seems inferior, except for Becket (1964), which is only a tad inferior. This movie has a hypnosis to it which makes us believe this is what Liz and Richard were actually like in their real relationship. But it goes beyond the excitement of celebrity worship, the movie gives us a strong sense of the love and hatred inherent to marriage. You sense the isolation from the rest of the world, the amount of fantasy involved, the madness, the mercilessness violence, the heart-breaking sweetness, and the ever-looming dead end. Did I mention that you will not be able to believe that the actors are any younger than their characters! The age, alcoholism, and miserable sarcasm is too much in their blood and brains.

This movie tops the year, yes, because it features possibly the best duet-acting in a movie, but also because it's a beautiful blues poem about love. The fact that it's also funny, smart, and scary just makes it that much easier to digest and makes it that much more realistic, because it, like life, is not monotone. The cinematography is a very rich and hallowed black-and-white. It feels soft, dreamy, and sexually agitated like a sculpture by Bernini.

Breakaway

Directed by Bruce Conner

Vocals and dance by Toni Basil

Movie starts, and BAM!, you're in Bruce Conner's reality. It feels like a more thrilling and enlightened reality than ours, and much more vivid and powerful than what most movies offer. He actually furthers the dance-themed cinema of Maya Deren!

The fact that the dance involves erotic attire and nudity, makes me think of pornography and where this falls in regards to that. Basil, the dancer, also happens to be the singer on the uplifting R&B record that is playing, so we get a full sense of a woman who is liberated, doing what she wants, in love with her body and its relation to the world, rejoicing in song and dance. The fact that a man recorded it and manipulated the images and sounds brings us back to the pornography question. But if Conner derives some pleasure from seeing a woman perform so beautifully, why should we fault him? Do we enjoy it is the more interesting question. Basil dancing in Conner's environment is a fantastic subject, and this movie reminds us that there is nothing wrong with appreciating beauty, whether it is our own, that of someone of the same sex, or that of someone of the opposite sex. Maybe that is why Conner's reality feels so much more thrilling and enlightened: it excludes the sin of our world and leaves only the fun.
The second half of the movie is perfectly fitting, bringing everything back to status quo. And it's completely captivating.

Rakvickarna

Writing, direction, and production design

by Jan Svankmajer

Produced by Erna Kmínková and Jirí Vanek

Cinematography by Jirí Safár

Editing by Helena Lebdusková and Hana Walachová

Puppeteering by Nad'a Munzarová and Jirí Procházka

Animation by Bohuslav Srámek

Music by Zdenek Liska

It flows so captivatingly, and yet it's always completely revolting. Director Svankmeyer seems to have adopted Bruce Conner's flow, and rapid-fire cutting. But the tone is somewhere between an eerie nightmare, a very pertinent parable, and a collage of fascinating textures. That's probably the chief benefit of the movie, the sense of the palpable. It's wet, it's furry, it hurts like hard hits upon the head, it's red and fleshy like eye sockets and gums. The parable aspect makes the whole piece that much more distasteful since we begin to realize that our habits aren't very different from that of the macabre characters.
The title is in Czech, and I believe it means either "Punch and Judy" or "Coffin House".

A Big Hand for the Little Lady

Directed by Fielder Cook

Written by Sidney Carroll

Produced by Fielder Cook

Cinematography by Lee Garmes

Editing by George R. Rohrs

Production design by Robert S. Smith

Set decor by Ralph S. Hurst

Starring Henry Fonda, Joanne Woodward,

Jason Robards, Kevin McCarthy,

and Allen Collins

It's a fun movie with an awesome script and wonderful performances by Fonda and Woodward. It would have been better without some of the comedic tone, but on the whole, the constantly shifting narrative keeps the viewers on their toes and makes for a suspenseful ride.